


The Non-Denominational Mid-Seasonal Soap Club

by orphan



Series: Omeletteverse [3]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Everybody Lives, Gen, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), Shatterdome Shenanigans, Soapmaking, dangers of walking into k-science unannounced, self-indulgent fluffy nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:20:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27695464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan/pseuds/orphan
Summary: The Shatterdome's standard-issue soap really is very terrible..
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Omeletteverse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1974679
Comments: 17
Kudos: 22





	The Non-Denominational Mid-Seasonal Soap Club

**Author's Note:**

> ME: lol only good movies get to kill characters for drama rip to uprising but im different
> 
> ALSO ME: Totally forgets that Renata and Ryoichi exist so, like... uh. Just pretend they have sane parents who pulled them out of the cadet program after the whole "using children in active combat" thing...

Doctor Geiszler has been back at the Shatterdome for nearly two weeks when Suresh decides to put his plan into action. It is not a mission he undertakes lightly. But while he may now technically be out of the program, Suresh was going to be a Ranger once, so never let anyone say he is a coward. He can face down one crazy brain-fried supervillain all by himself. No problem. Totally.

He waits until 1317 on a Tuesday, because that’s when he knows Doctor Gottlieb will be out of the lab. He has a senior staff meeting Doctor Geiszler isn’t invited to, on account of still technically being a prisoner and also evil, probably, meaning he will be alone. Suresh makes sure to bring a coffee, because he has not forgotten the Ancient Accords, and also because he’s never been alone with Doctor Geiszler before and, honestly, will need all the help he can get. Dude is . . . creepy. Really, really creepy.

He’s currently working out of the wet lab, which aside from being unfortunately named always smells like a horror show of ammonia and rotting silicone and even worse things. Doctor Geiszler is wearing a serious mad scientist rubber apron getup, some kind of bizarre pair of goggles pushed up into the nest of his wild hair. He gestures Suresh over when he hears footsteps and barks, “Put the coffee down near the door and come here. You’re just in time.”

“Um,” says Suresh, wondering if Doctor Geiszler was expecting someone else. Doctor Gottlieb, maybe? Suresh’s limbs never quite worked right, after Tokyo, and there’s a lurching shuffle in his step he’s coming to realize may never fully go away, no matter how much PT he attends. That and the shake in his hands and the slur in his voice and the . . . fuzz in his brain and . . .

Well. He’ll never be a Ranger. Not any more. But. He’s not dead. So.

“C’mon c’mon c’mon,” Doctor Geiszler is saying, arm gesturing frantically, splattering what almost certainly isn’t water all over the lab. His other arm is elbow-deep in some kind of murky yellow tank, a vague shadowy . . . something not-quite visible at the bottom.

Almost in spite of himself, Suresh puts the coffee down, as instructed, and inches closer.

“Great, great. Okay here we go, ready or not,” Doctor Geiszler says, more to himself than anything else. Then he’s hauling an enormous mass of rubbery flesh out of the murk, and dumping it into Suresh’s arms.

Suresh catches it without even really thinking about it, then immediately wishes he hadn’t. The mass is . . . Suresh doesn’t know _what_ it is. Unidentified kaiju viscera, like they’d found inside Obsidian Fury; a twisted knot of tentacles and pulsing nodules. Suresh isn’t even sure if it’s alive, and he _definitely_ doesn’t think he should be holding it in his bare hands. Or getting it on his clothes, for that matter.

This must show on his face, because Doctor Geiszler announces, “Don’t make that face, dude. It’s almost certainly totally safe probably,” in a far-too cheerful voice. Then, stripping out of his gloves and apron: “Just, like. Wash your hands before you eat. Which you should be doing anyway!”

“Um,” says Suresh. “Actually—”

“Hold on tight.” From a table, Doctor Geiszler grabs what looks very suspiciously like jumper cables. He attaches them to the . . . mass with a: “It might get kicky.”

“What?” is as far as Suresh gets. Then Doctor Geiszler is throwing a big red switch and, sure enough, the mass begins to thrash.

Suresh emits what is very definitely a masculine shout of protest and absolutely not a high-pitched yelp. The mass is large, maybe the size of a beach ball, but neither heavy nor strong. Mostly, it’s just awkward. And slippery. And extremely, disgustingly gross. Particularly when the pustules on its surface begin _writhing_ and—

“Oh god are those _eggs_? Are they _hatching_?”

“The miracle of life!” Doctor Geiszler throws his arms wide, grinning and looking every bit the mad scientist. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

It’s horrifying, is what it is. Suresh can see _legs_ and teeth and far, far too many neon blue eyes, squirming beneath the surface of the still-thrashing mass of flesh. “I’m gonna be sick,” he says, because this is way worse than boobs. “Oh fuck. Oh fuck it’s coming out . . .” and then definitely not more inarticulate shrieking as, yes, the first of the . . . things burst free.

They’re sort of like horseshoe crabs, charcoal grey and glowing blue, and about the size of a kitten. Way more legs than a kitten, though, and a writhing mass of tentacles where their tails should be. One pops free, then another, and they peer up at Suresh with kaiju-bright eyes as they click their tiny-but-terrifyingly-full-of-teeth mandibles. They’re also probably making some kind of sound, though it’s hard to tell over his own screaming and Doctor Geiszler’s maniacal laughter as he throws his arms wide and yells, “Yes, babies! To Daddy!”

He’s holding some kind of device in one hand. It looks mostly like a box of wires tied together with duct tape, though it has a switch on the top and when he presses it, an LED begins blinking and the lab is filled with . . . something. Like the smell before a storm, like the feel of standing too close to a live wire. Immediately, all the horrible little crab-things turn towards him, then open their shells and take flight on bug-like wings.

“They fly,” Suresh says, somewhat hysterically. “Of course they fly.”

Fly immediately to Doctor Geiszler, in fact; gathering on his bare forearms and around his neck. He makes a kind of _gakh_ sound, flinching and giggling with a, “That tickles!” Then, to no one in particular: “Imprint call successful, DNA sampling commenced.”

“Oh god,” says Suresh. He’s going to die. Again. Doctor Geiszler is going to feed him to his terrifying tiny crab monsters. There won’t even be any part of him left to warn anyone of what’s happening.

Movement and a chirruping sound draws his attention back down to the . . . mass that he is, yes, still diligently holding. Some of the eggs, he sees, have not hatched. Still more seem to have half-hatched then died almost immediately.

And then there’s one, single solitary crab kitten left. There’s something wrong with its wings; too thick and too stumpy and too lopsided. It’s obviously trying to reach its siblings but it can’t get itself airborne. Meaning all it can do is stand on the edge of the lump of flesh that birthed it, pitifully mewling.

“Um,” says Suresh. “D-Doctor Geiszler? I think this one is . . .” Is what?

Suresh shifts the mass into one hand, pokes at the crab kitten with the other. He isn’t sure why. It is, objectively, entirely hideous and also probably going to eat him but . . . but something about it, crying and alone, and—

“Ah!” A sharp little lance of pain, and Suresh pulls his hand back, sees where blood is beading on his fingertips from the bite of tiny, needle-sharp teeth. “It bit me!”

“Hm. They’re not supposed to bite. Dead skin should be enough.” Doctor Geiszler is, suddenly, very close. Still covered over the head and shoulders by a half-dozen of the little crab kittens, now looking like they’re settling in for a nap.

“I don’t think it’s very . . . um,” Suresh says. He and Doctor Geiszler watch as the thing in question wobbles awkwardly across the mass. There’s something wrong with its legs, too. Or maybe its . . . brain? Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be having a fantastic time, even as it tries its best to get closer to Suresh.

“Let’s see your finger,” says Doctor Geiszler. Suresh does as instructed which, in retrospect, he should have known not to do. Because _of course_ Doctor Geiszler immediately grabs his hand, and offers the little droplets of blood on his fingertip to the wobbly crabkitten.

“What are you—?” Suresh tries to pull his hand away but Doctor Geiszler is _strong_ , deceptively strong, and holds him still. Suresh can only watch in horror as the crabkitten opens its mandibles and extends a tiny, glowing tongue to lap as his blood. One lick, then two. Then it makes a little chattering sound and—far too fast for something that had been struggling so much before—darts up to wind itself around his hand.

“It’s imprinted to your DNA,” Doctor Geiszler explains. “You’re Daddy, now. It won’t hurt you.” He lets go of Suresh, takes a half-step back.

“What— what _is_ it?”

“Hiveswarm.” Doctor Geiszler immediately screws up his face in distaste as he says it. “What a mouthful. A drone? Too generic? Already done? Raincheck; we’ll think of a better name and get back to you. But think of it like a raspberry pie.”

“Um.” That clears approximately nothing up, but apparently the conversation has moved on when Doctor Geiszler pushes Suresh towards a dissection table and says: “Put the womb down.”

“Oh god,” says Suresh, and immediately does so. Then shrieks as Doctor Geiszler slams a huge cleaver he’s apparently pulled from nowhere into one of the tentacles. (The little crabk— drone still wound around Suresh’s hand also hisses, which makes him feel a little better. Just a little.)

Doctor Geiszler has also apparently produced a small glass fishbowl, and dumps the severed tentacle into the bottom of it. Then ladles in some of the murky yellow water, and tries to hand the whole thing over.

“What—?”

“Keep him in here for now. We’ll email full care instructions later.”

“ _What_? No, I can’t—”

“He imprinted to you, dude,” says Doctor Geiszler. “He won’t respond to anyone else and he’ll just hibernate if you’re not around. So either you keep him, or we chuck him in the biomass recycler.”

“No!” Suresh has no idea what said recycling entails, but his reaction to the thought of it—of the little broken drone being subjected to it—surprises even him. As does the way he instinctively cradles the drone closer to his chest. It may be a hideously ugly kaiju . . . thing, but that’s not its fault.

“Right,” says Doctor Geiszler, shaking the fishbowl. “So . . .”

Suresh takes the bowl. It smells powerfully chemical, salt and ammonia, enough to make his eyes water if he looks straight into the opening. “We’re not allowed pets,” he says, because Ranger Lambert is going to absolutely _freak_. His eye will probably do The Thing.

“It’s not a pet.” Doctor Geiszler has produced a long pair of forceps, and has started pulling free the drones that . . . didn’t make it. “You’re assisting us with an important experiment. If Lambert wants to bitch you out about it tell him him to take it up with your boss. Which is now us. Congratulations on your promotion to K-Science, by the way.”

“I— I’m terrible at science!” This is true; the only reason Suresh isn’t flunking out entirely is because of study group.

“You’re bad at school, dude,” Doctor Geiszler says. “Join the club. Good at following instructions, though, and you didn’t immediately try and kill everything we handed you. We’ve worked with worse.” A pause, then a wince and an exaggerated shudder. “A _lot_ worse.”

“Oh.” Suresh looks down at where the little drone has curled itself into his hand, tails wrapped around his wrist. It’s making chirruping purring sounds and, well. It is sort of cute. In a hideously ugly kind of way. And it doesn’t seem to care that Suresh’s fingers shake and twitch where they cup around its chitinous body.

Suresh swallows, and takes a step closer to the dissection table. “What— what was wrong with these ones?” He means the little row of dead drones, half-formed and twisted, carefully laid out on the metal.

Doctor Geiszler sighs. “Been trying to build them to survive in Earth’s atmosphere,” he says. “They gestate quickly and this is the first generation we’ve had survivors. But . . . not perfect, not yet.” He reaches up to run a hand through his hair, hits drones instead, and seems to suddenly remember that they’re there.

“Why?”

There’s another tank, set up next to what looks like Doctor Geiszler’s desk. Like Suresh’s fishbowl, but larger, and Doctor Geiszler begins picking the little drones off his body and placing them inside, despite chirrups of protest. “It’s cute,” he says, “how you’re all so wedded to this idea that, if you push into the Anteverse, the only things you’re going to have to deal with are more daikaiju. Or it would be, if it wasn’t going to get you all killed.”

“Oh.”

“So here we are. Again. Doing what we’ve always done, trying to understand things before the Rangers run off to beat their heads against them.” Another huff, not quite a laugh and not quite a sigh. Then: “Right. Where’s that fucking coffee? Also: you brought it ‘cause you wanted something. Spill.”

“Oh. Um . . . it doesn’t—” It feels so _stupid_ , now. So petty. The sort of thing you’d ask your high school science teacher. Not someone in the middle of trying to . . . to re-engineer alien life. “It’s fine. I’ve gotta— um.”

Suresh makes a vague gesture with his fishbowl, and makes as if to leave.

“Uh uh.” Except to get to the door, he has to push past Doctor Geiszler. Who’s currently sitting on a desk, and brings his legs up to rest on another, effectively blocking Suresh’s escape. “ _Now_ we’re just curious. C’mon. Hit us.”

“Um, okay. I just, um . . .” Then, blurted all at once: “Do you know how to make soap?”

Whatever question Doctor Geiszler was expecting, apparently this was not it. “ . . . soap?” he says.

Suresh nods, feeling suddenly young and kind of stupid. “Like. From— from scratch. Fat and— and lye?”

Narrowed eyes over the rim of a coffeecup. “Why?”

Well. He’s here, now. No going back, in for a penny, et cetera et cetera. “It’s, um. For Ilya. For Christmas, right? The soap here is . . . it’s kind of, y’know.”

“Dries your skin out like fucking sandpaper? Yeah. We know; makes us break out something chronic. You know what age is not the right age for acne? Forty-fucking-five is not the right fucking age for acne.”

“Right. Right, so I thought, um. Maybe I could . . . make something better?” Thought maybe he could do _something_. Something useful. After . . . everything. Before the Corps finally got sick of him and sent him home though, huh. Maybe . . . maybe not so much, now? Maybe.

“It’s not hard!” Suresh adds, quickly. “Or . . . it’s not supposed to be. I read a— a tutorial. Online. But it’s just—”

“Boiling lye,” Doctor Geiszler finishes. “Dangerous, if you don’t have the right equipment. But, hey. Lucky you, living right next door to the lab of the world’s foremost evil scientific genius.”

“Um . . .”

“So, basically, you’re asking us if we’re prepared to misuse PPDC resources to help you with a personal craft project. To which we say: fuck the fuck yeah! Sign us the fuck up, dude. Let’s go, let’s saponify all the— wait. This isn’t some, like. _Fight Club_ ass-boiling thing, is it? Because we are _totally_ still down if it is. Human fat soap does not even register on our moral radar, dude.”

“Oh, god. Um. No. Like . . . goat milk, maybe? I don’t have, like. The stuff yet.”

“Let us know when you do,” says Doctor Geiszler, with an absolutely wicked grin. “We’re gonna smash your soap project, dude. You’ll see.”

* * *

“It’s like . . . some kinda hideously ugly Pokémon or something.”

Later, in the dorms. Suresh pulls back from Jinhai, oddly affronted. “Don’t call Doctor Zoidberg ugly!”

“You called your tiny kaiju ‘Doctor Zoidberg?’” Amara stifles a giggle, exchanging glances with Vik where they’re flaked out together on the bunk.

“So?”

“I think it’s gonna eat our brains,” Ilya says. “In the night. Or . . . inject mind-control worms.”

“I don’t think—”

“No. It is definitely a spy,” is Vik’s opinion. “Reporting everything we say back to its master.”

“Hey,” says Amara, overly loudly. “I heard that physics is the one true science and every other science is lame fake science for lamers. Especially biology. Sounds legit to me.” They wait, oddly pensive. For one beat, then two. Then, when Doctor Geiszler fails to appear from a Breach torn via the power of his outrage alone: “Probably not a spy drone.”

“Zee isn’t a spy drone,” Suresh tries. The creature in question is currently on its back on his knees, little legs wriggling in delight as he tickles its belly. Or . . . whatever that part of it is called. “Doc said he was . . . food? I think.”

“Food?” Ilya looks skeptically down as the mass of thrashing tails and wiggling legs.

“Yeah. Like . . . a pie? A raspberry pie?”

“I mean, blueberry maybe,” says Jinhai. “Crab and blueberry.”

“Oh,” says Amara. “Not raspberry pie. A Raspberry _Pi_.” She draws a little wriggly line in the air, two vertical legs descending from it. “It’s a— wow. It’s a computer. A tiny little Precursor computer.”

They all stare down at it.

“How does—?”

“Alexa.” Ilya claps. “Play ‘Despacito.’”

“Doctor Zoidberg,” Suresh corrects.

“Doctor Zoidberg, play ‘Despacito.’”

Doctor Zoidberg does not, as it turns out, play “Despacito.”

“Doc said he was, like. Imprinted to me?” Suresh says. “I don’t think he listens to anyone else. Also, I don’t think he understands English.”

“What are you going to do with it?” Amara, straining forward to try and get a better look, now there’s the potential for engineering involved. “Is it going to get bigger? You can, like. Ride it into battle.”

“I don’t think it gets bigger,” says Suresh, and desperately hopes that this is so.

* * *

Apparently Doctor Geiszler was serious about the job. Suresh finds this out the next day, when Doctor Gottlieb is waiting for him after class and hands him a tablet with a: “Newton tells me he has dragooned you into his awful nonsense. Commiserations. I trust you’ll find the remuneration an agreeable trade off.”

“Wait,” says Suresh, looking down at the contract on the tablet’s screen. “I get _paid_?”

He does, indeed, get paid; as a part-time junior lab assistant and first official employee of what is apparently called K-Tech.

“We make kaiju,” Doctor Geiszler explains, when Suresh reports to his first day as an actual Real Live PPDC Employee, not just a Cadet.

“Is . . . is that. Y’know. A good ide—?”

“ _Wrong_ question, lab minion.” Doctor Geiszler is not exactly tall but, gosh. He’s still quite intimidating, right up close. With that manic grin and vigorously pointing finger, nails charcoal black with something Suresh can now see is _definitely_ _not nail polish_. “That is a Hermann question. A Mako question. Not a K-Tech question. The correct, appropriate, Newt-approved question is, ‘Is that an _awesome_ idea or a _super mind-blowingly amazingly awesome_ idea?’ And the answer is, ‘Fuck yeah!’”

“Oh god,” says Suresh.

Doctor Geiszler just laughs at him, scratchy and shrill, and slaps him slightly too vigorously on the back. “Don’t worry, kid,” he says. “You’ll be great.”

* * *

Doctor Geiszler hands him a small device with two buttons; one red, one green.

“Ever trained a dog before?” he asks.

“We, um. We always had cats?” Suresh says. Then, because he can _see_ the next question forming behind Doctor Geiszler’s eyes: “That we didn’t. Um. Train.”

“Cool. Right, well. That thing right there is a clicker. For your drone; better name still pending let us know if you think of anything sick. Green butto— Wait. You aren’t colour blind are yo—? No okay cool. Green button: positive reinforcement. Sends a little jolt of pleasure-signal. Red button: negative reinforcement. Two settings. Light press, to the first click, is like”—a vague hand gesture, like Doctor Geiszler is trying to bring the words to himself from the air—“emotional. Being scolded by Daddy. That’s the one you wanna be mostly using. Second press is harsher, more like a— a slap. Only for emergencies. Like, life or death. Mostly wanna be using positive reinforcement only. Got it?”

“Um.” Suresh looks between the cobbled-together little box and Doctor Zoidberg, nestled in his other hand and gazing up with what Suresh is pretty sure is attentive adoration. “Yeah. Okay. Got it. Um. What am I . . . what should I be training him to do?”

Doctor Geiszler just waves vaguely, even as he’s already walking away. “Don’t care. Doesn’t matter. Dress in drag and do the hula, if that’s what floats your goat. We’ll be back over in an hour or so to se how you’re going. Get it got it good? Also, kid? Next time, don’t bring us coffee. Not that we don’t appreciate it but, like. You’re ours now. No further appeasement required.” He’s wandered off behind the sample tanks before Suresh can formulate a reply.

“Um,” he tells Doctor Zoidberg. “Well. Guess we do the thing, huh?”

He gets a happy chirrup in response.

The first thing Suresh does, after finding a relatively quiet corner of the lab, is Google _dog training with clicker how to_. Then spends a good ten minutes reading blog posts and watching enthusiastic people on YouTube. There’s lots of talk about patience, and empathy, and reinforcement and consistency, and putting oneself in the mind of one’s pet, which seems a fair bit easier when talking about, like, an Earth mammal with a good hundred thousand years of co-evolution alongside humans behind it.

Suresh decides to skip over the lessons on sitting, mostly because he’s not entirely sure that’s actually something Zee can physically do, what with the legs and all. So they work on stay-come instead. It is . . . surprisingly fun, and not as difficult as he’d been expecting. Zee, he figures out, wants to obey him. The only issue they have is with communication; Suresh vaguely remembers Amara talking about the Precursors not having, like. A spoken language? So, naturally, their weird computer bugs aren’t predisposed to following verbal commands. Hence the clicker. But Zee picks up gestures faster than words, and pretty soon they’ve mastered stay and come, care of some hand movements. They’re working on rolling over and fist-bumping (or headbutting, in Zee’s case) when Suresh looks up and notices Doctor Geiszler watching him.

“Show us what you got,” says Doctor Geiszler, so Suresh does.

When he’s done, Doctor Geiszler reaches into the pocket of his lab coat, and he pulls out one of his own drones. He puts it down on the floor, and runs through the same gestures; the drone executes them perfectly, even running on the come command despite, Suresh assumes, being able to fly.

“Hm,” says Doctor Geiszler, whose poker face is tremendously disconcerting. Then: “Come with us.”

Suresh does, and they end up on the far side of the lab. In front of the sickly yellow-green glow of the dismembered-yet-living kaiju brain Suresh knows is called Alice.

“Hey baby,” Doctor Geiszler says to it. “Fistbump for Daddy?” He raises his fist to the glass.

The sound of tentacles hitting the inside of the tank, right in front of Doctor Geiszler’s fist, makes Suresh jump. “What—?” How did it—?

“Welcome to the hive mind,” Doctor Geiszler tells him, grinning his too-sharp, too-manic grin. “You aren’t just teaching your little dude tricks. You’re teaching _everyone_.”

* * *

Suresh’s soap supplies arrive the next day and, true to his word, Doctor Geiszler arranges a time for them to meet up in one of the less-kaiju-populated labs after dinner. He hands over a tablet, opened to an extremely cottagecore-looking website Suresh remembers from his own research.

“This one should be pretty easy to get you started,” Doctor Geiszler says, jumping up to sit on a nearby desk. “Set up all the kit for you over there, and you can use the fume hood for the lye.”

“Oh,” says Suresh, who had been expecting something less . . . hands off. “I—”

“You’ll do great, dude. We’re right here if you need us.”

So . . . Suresh gets to work. He reads through all of the website’s instructions then, feeling incredibly stupid, reads through them again. He has trouble now, sometimes. Holding things in his head. Not big things; he always knows who he is, who his parents are, what year it is and how to tie his shoes. But small stuff. New details. Like . . . like a recipe to make soap.

“Chuck it to the projector if it’s easier,” Doctor Geiszler says, not even looking up from where he’s going through a stack of reports with an aggressively red pen. “Usually easier than trying to juggle the tablet and everything else all at once.”

Suresh does, and . . . and okay. Okay, he can do this. He pets Doctor Zoidberg for good luck, then gets down to measuring and preparing.

And, the thing is? It’s fine. Everything just . . . is fine. Doctor Geiszler helps him with the fume hood and some of the pouring, but nothing goes wrong and no one blows up or gets horribly burned or gassed with lye.

They’re waiting for the pH to come down when Doctor Gottlieb finds them, striding into the lab with a, “ _There_ you ar— what on Earth are you up to now?”

“Hey babe,” says Doctor Geiszler, completely unrepentant in the face of his husband’s eternal, industrial-strength bitch face. “Making soap.” He even gives Doctor Gottlieb a kiss, arm slung around his waist.

“Dear Lord,” comes the response. “Why? Is this some sort of _Fight Club_ thing? If you are boiling human adipose—”

Doctor Geiszler just laughs, bumping his hip into Doctor Gottlieb in a way the has Suresh wincing. Apparently unnecessarily so, when it elicits nothing more serious than a raised eyebrow.

“We wish,” says Doctor Geiszler. “But nah. Goat milk.”

“I— oh. I, ah. Hard heard that is rather good for the skin.”

“Thank Doctor Sciresh over there. Was his idea.”

“I see. Were you thinking of, ah. Selling your creations? When they’re done.”

“Um. No?” says Suresh who, up until literally this exact moment, had never thought anyone would want to buy them.

“Ah. Pity.” Doctor Gottlieb looks legitimately disappointed.

“Don’t worry, babe,” says Doctor Geiszler. “We’ll make you some.”

“No thank you,” comes the immediate reply, Doctor Gottlieb switching from awkward to snarky in a heartbeat. “I shudder to think what dreadful ingredients you’d try. Does kaiju fat even saponify?”

“Well. Do you wanna shower or do you wanna strip pai-aa-actually that— that could be worth looking into.” Then, into his watch: “Add todo: kaiju soap experiment. Get minion’s help.”

Doctor Gottlieb just sighs, as if this is all very tedious to him (and regardless of the way he’s not-at-all subtly leaning into his husband), and tells Suresh: “Well. If you find yourself with any excess, please do keep me in mind.”

“Oh, wow,” says Suresh. “Y-yeah. Of course.”

* * *

He ends up with quite a lot of soap, when everything’s said and done. Just over a kilo of it, in fact, that he diligently (if slightly shakily) slices into little bars, and wraps up in a bunch of ancient topographical maps of the first Breach he finds abandoned in the lab.

As far as Christmas gifts go, he thinks they turn out pretty cool. Plus he has enough to give out to everyone, including Doctor Gottlieb, and even some left over for himself.

(The soap is an aggressively orange color, which had been a surprise. “Sugars caramelized,” is Doctor Geiszler’s explanation. “Can fix that, for next time.” Suresh just wonders how difficult it would be to extract essential oils from citrus peel . . .)

Suresh, of course, doesn’t technically do Christmas, but the Shatterdome does shut down for New Year’s, so he goes home to his parents for two mostly relaxing weeks. He has to leave Doctor Zoidberg behind ( _“He’ll just hibernate. But we’ll look out for him for you.”_ ), and can’t exactly talk about his new job. Still, his family is pleased he has one and, importantly, that it doesn’t involve risking his life (again) in a Jaeger.

“We’ll make a doctor of you yet,” Suresh’s dad announces, earnestly excited, if also overzealous.

When Suresh gets back, Doctor Zoidberg is waiting for him on his bed, curled into a ball, big glittery bow glued just behind his head. Zee uncurls as soon as Suresh touches him, chirruping in joy and rolling over, legs wriggling and demanding tickles.

“It missed you,” Ilya says.

“Someone had to,” says Jinhai, and Suresh throws a pillow at him in response.

He definitely notices how . . . moisturized everyone’s skin is looking, and allows himself a small moment of satisfaction.

He’s been back for nearly a week when a j-tech he’s never met before corners him in the DFAC with a: “You the soap guy?”

“Um,” says Suresh. “Yeah?”

“Got any more?” asks the j-tech. “How much you want for it?”

Suresh stammers out that he’d have to make some, then blurts out a price that may or may not have any relation to how much it actually costs, and ends the interaction with an eager agreement and a name to contact when he’s done.

The pattern repeats itself several times over the next week. Gossip spreads fast in the ‘Dome and Suresh is now, formally, The Soap Guy. By the time his new supplies arrive he’s got an order list of nearly twenty people, and he’s starting to worry about how he’s going to fill it all.

“I need to make more soap,” he blurts to Doctor Geiszler, because he still technically has no way of doing so without stealing lab equipment.

“Uh huh, cool cool,” comes the response, muffled from where Doctor Geiszler is halfway inside an enormous organ recovered from Raijin. Something to do with the electrokinesis, they think.

“Um. Tomorrow maybe?”

“Yeah sure no— no, wait.” Doctor Geiszler’s head re-emerges, streaked with so much Blue Suresh might be worried, if yesterday he hadn’t walked in on Doctor Geiszler changing his shirt and seen the man’s _scales_. “Day after?”

“Um. Sure.”

“Great.” The head vanishes again, lost in the exploration of viscera.

On the day in question, Suresh arrives with his box of supplies, and is immediately handed an enormous slice of what he’s assured is Black Forest cake, regardless of its distressingly neon blue coloration.

“Thank you? Um. What—?”

“Forty-fucking-six, baby,” Doctor Geiszler announces, over his own enormous piece of cake. “Officially Old-tee-em. Just waiting for the grey to arrive en masse so we can really lean into the whole mad scientist look, y’know?”

“Oh,” says Suresh, who thinks Doctor Geiszler is already doing fairly well on that front. “Congratulations?” It almost feels . . . surreal. That someone like Doctor Geiszler would celebrate something so mundane as a birthday. Suresh knows, objectively, that Doctor Geiszler had been young once—he’s seen pictures, because everyone has—and . . . human. And must come equipped with all that implies. Like a family. Does Doctor Geiszler have parents? Siblings? Aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and are they still alive? What do they think about the whole . . . thing. With trying to destroy the world and all?

Wow. That conversation must’ve been awkward. It’s making Suresh squirm just thinking about it, so he doesn’t. Just eats his cake and says: “I bought oranges. To, um. Make the soap smell? But I don’t really know, um...”

“Ooh, esters,” Doctor Geiszler says, tongue stained blue from what Suresh is hoping is the cake. “Can show you how to make some truly peak eau de vomit while we’re at it. One little drop and it’ll drive someone absolutely crazy. Made a guy tear apart his entire dorm room looking for the source, back in the day. Never did find it. Good times.”

“Oh. Cool.” Suresh is absolutely not thinking of Jinhai as he says it.

Which turns out to be prophetic when, moments later, the cadet in question tumbles into the lab, trailing Ilya and Amara and Vik to boot.

“This is where you go,” says Ilya.

“Secret soap factory!” from Amara. “Very Project Mayhem.”

“Good thing Herms bought us an enormous cake,” says Doctor Geiszler, and goes to fetch more pieces.

So they set up a production line. Suresh brought more goat milk but also avocado and coconut oil, to mix things up. Doctor Geiszler has apparently decided to make clear glycerin soap, Amara has been Googling recipes and Ilya stole a whole bunch of random things from the DFAC for them to try using, from rock salt to sprigs of rosemary to food coloring to jelly moulds. They send Jinhai out for more fruit, and Doctor Geiszler teaches them how to distill esters and essential oils. It’s all . . . fun. Creative. Like they can just forget, for one evening, about the war and everything it entails. Can just spend an evening being dumb teens, eating cake and making mess.

“We need glitter,” Ilya says, at one point. “Why didn’t we get glitter?”

“We have a barrel full of plastic waste you can dump straight into the ocean, instead,” says Doctor Geiszler, not looking up from where he is (completely predictably) dying his glycerin various alarming shades of neon blue. “Has about the same effect.”

“They make biodegradable glitter,” Amara points out.

“Mm. Out of eucalypts. ‘Cause, y’know. Cutting down a whole forest of trees is way better, you’re right.”

“All right. Well how would _you_ do it then, Doctor Genius?”

“That’s Doctor _Evil_ Genius to you,” Doctor Geiszler says. Then pauses, finger still raised in the air, expression thoughtful. “And give us a week and we’ll get back to you.”

“You’ve done it now,” says Vik. “He’s going to make it out of kaiju. You know that, yes?”

“Absolutely we are,” Doctor Geiszler says, far too cheerfully. “Organic silicates are basically just sand. We’ll need to find someone with an example of iridescence to copy . . . Onibaba or Raiju maybe . . .” Trailing off and muttered to himself.

“I suppose ‘distract the Precursors with shiny things’ is one way to beat the Anteverse,” Vik says, shrugging.

* * *

Suresh makes his orange-scented goat milk soap. Vik’s rough-cut chunks are black and studded with tea and rosemary. Amara makes pastel swirls, Ilya rainbow jellies. Jinhai’s bars are plain white, salt and coconut and painfully neat. And Doctor Geiszler ends up with a collection of surprisingly realistic-looking crystal spars in kaiju-blue. Then they all swap, taking one bar of each and giving the excess to Suresh to distribute to his waiting list. Which he does, over the next few days, tracking people down and being tracked down in turn. Somehow, his order list gets even longer.

“I don’t know how I’m going to keep up with this,” he tells Ilya, one evening while they’re trying to teach Doctor Zoidberg to play fetch.

“Quit your job. Found a start-up.”

“A soap start-up?”

“Sure. Hire someone to make you an app. Custom soap delivery, on demand.” Ilya throws the tennis ball they’ve found to the far side of the dorm, Zee scuttling after it eagerly. “My cousin did it. With socks.”

“I don’t . . . actually want to make soap for a living.” It’s not something Suresh has really thought about before, but . . . it’s true. He likes the soap making. It’s fun. But so is working in K-Tech, now that he’s getting used to the smell and the slime and, well. Doctor Geiszler. And Suresh doesn’t want to leave the PPDC, doesn’t want to leave Ilya and the others. Even if he’ll never be able to get back inside a Jaeger, he still wants to help.

“Well. Then you learn to say no. People can make their own soap, if they want it so bad.”

“I’ll just tell them to get their own lab, then?” They both watch in fascination as Zee drags the ball back towards them, wrapped in a multitude of waving tails.

“You think Doc is going to care if they use his?” Ilya says. “He makes _monsters_ for fun, man. And the Marshal lets him do it here because the other option went very badly. He doesn’t care about some soap.”

“He’s going to care if people mess it up.” Zee drops the ball next to Suresh this time, and earns a scritch behind the head before Suresh throws it again.

“So make sure they don’t.”

“What, like . . . run a class?” Then, when Ilya just shrugs: “I’m not . . . I can’t do that.” But even as the words leave his lips, Suresh knows they’re a lie.

* * *

The fliers appear in the DFAC within a week. Jinhai makes them a Soap Club graphic out of an old _Fight Club_ film poster that, Suresh thinks, turns out really well. Amara helps work out the maths for the entry fee to cover materials, and Suresh tells his former customers the new deal. Then has to make a sign-up sheet when interest exceeds the number of people Doctor Geiszler will allow in the lab at any one time (apparently even evil geniuses have to obey the OSHC).

On Tuesday, Suresh gathers his courage and knocks on Doctor Gottlieb’s door. The others tease him for it endlessly but, yes. Suresh is rather terrified of Doctor Gottlieb, far more so than Doctor Geiszler, who’s definitely crazy and probably also evil, but one-on-one is mostly just like someone’s ageing hipster uncle. Doctor Gottlieb, on the other hand, is stern. Not, like. Mean or anything; honestly he’s never been anything other than nice to them. Just, like. A super-important super-busy twice-over genius war hero, and Suresh lives in perpetual terror he may do something to make Doctor Gottlieb _disappointed_ , which would literally be the worst thing to ever happen ever. Particularly when Suresh is taking up the man’s time asking about—

“Soap. You want to run a soap making class in Lab D?”

“Um. Yes? Um. H-here. I’ve got a class list? I was thinking maybe we could run something monthly? So long as people are interested.” He hands over a copy of his sign-up sheet. Doctor Gottlieb even reads it.

“Lab D is Newton’s lab, technically. I assume you’ve discussed this with him?”

Suresh nods. “He’s, um. He told me it was. Um. ‘Totally rad?’”

That is definitely a smirk Doctor Gottlieb is trying not to show. “I see. I assume you’re now seeking approval from an _actual_ adult?” Then, before Suresh can figure out how to answer this: “Then you have it. I think it’s an excellent idea, and wish you the best of luck.” This time, he allows a sliver of a smirk though. “Particularly if it means a greater supply of your excellent product.”

* * *

On Wednesday, Doctor Geiszler appears out of nowhere to announce, “Hold out your hand!” and, when Suresh reluctantly does so, pours an enormous pile of iridescent purple-blue glitter into it. “Teeny tiny k-glass,” he explains. “Grew a big ol’ chunk and ground it into dust. Wouldn’t eat a bag of it quite just yet, but it should be safe enough.”

“Oh wow,” says Suresh, who is desperately hoping this is true and he doesn’t wind up with some kind of dreadful hand cancer. Or everything cancer, given that, yes. The glitter gets absolutely _everywhere_ (something Doctor Geiszler maintains is an “essential property”). Including all over Doctor Gottlieb, who spends a good half a day with a glittery handprint on his coat, not at all coincidentally level with his butt.

“Payback for the shampoo,” Doctor Geiszler says, unrepentant, when Ranger Pentecost finally points it out.

“Mm,” says Doctor Gottlieb, suspiciously mildly.

That afternoon, Suresh nearly has a stroke when he finds Doctor Geiszler apparently choking to death in the lab, mug of coffee spilled all over the desk.

“It’s fine! We’re fine!” Doctor Geiszler manages to cough. He’s doubled over, but it’s as much with laughter as anything else. “Fu-fucker ground up. _B-brown chalk_ into our fu-fucking coffee. We’ll be— we’ll be fine.”

Except . . . he kind of isn’t. The coughing eventually stops but it’s replaced by chronic sneezing, Doctor Geiszler’s throat coming out in a rather alarming rash.

They all end up in Medical, including Doctor Gottlieb, who comes running in close to tears after Suresh goes to fetch him. Doctor Geiszler calms him down in between violent sneezing and, “It’s allergies. Just allergies. They wanted to give us antihistamines but we’re not sure how they’ll react, so we just gotta wait it out. But it’s not anaphylaxis. We’re not dying.”

“You ridiculous, foolish little man,” Doctor Gottlieb says, apparently not caring at all that he’s getting Doctor Geiszler’s snot all over his coat. “I’m so, so sorry. I never meant—”

“Dude, it’s fine. You couldn’t’ve known.”

And. Well. That’s how they accidentally find out kaiju are allergic to calcite.

Doctor Geiszler is fine by the next day, though Doctor Gottlieb immediately sets about aggressively removing all chalk from the Shatterdome which, given he’s really the only person who still uses it, isn’t all that difficult. Doctor Geiszler collects all of said chalk and immediately starts trying to think of ways of producing a chalk bomb that would work against a full-sized kaiju, which results in significantly more sneezing in the lab, as well as a lot of frustrated eye rolls from Doctor Gottlieb. They also find out calcium carbonate barriers are good to stop the hivedrones (cooler name still pending) from wandering into areas they shouldn’t, although aggressive testing is forestalled by the truly woebegone look Zee gives Suresh every time it encounters such an obstacle.

“I think it’s secretly your superpower,” Suresh tells it. “Kaiju eyes. The Precursors couldn’t kill us so they’re going to adorableness us to death instead.”

When Doctor Geiszler’s next batch of drones are birthed with enormous blue eyes and huge fuzzy antennae, Suresh is somehow not surprised.

* * *

The soapmaking class goes really, really well. Everyone who signed up turns up, plus a few hopeful drop-ins Doctor Geiszler turns away (with next month’s sign-up sheet) at the door. Suresh is almost paralysingly nervous for the first ten minutes or so, but the feeling fades when it occurs to him that, yes. He really does know what he’s doing and, yes. Everyone really is here to learn how that goes.

“Totally nailing the pedagogy, dude,” Doctor Geiszler tells him, about halfway through. “You’re a natural.”

No one’s ever told Suresh he was a natural at anything before, especially not something he enjoyed so much. And . . . and maybe it doesn’t mean much now—not when the War is still on—but . . . one day. Maybe.

At the end of the night, everyone helps clean up while they wait for their blocks of soap to cool. Then they’re all thanking Suresh, and teasing each other about their soaps, and it’s just . . . good. And tomorrow they’ll all be back to robots and aliens and stress and strategies. But for tonight, people had fun. Suresh helped people have fun. _He_ had fun. And maybe it’s not much, all things considered. But it’s his.

“Um. I just— Thank you. For all of this. I know it’s not really, like . . .” Suresh trails off. Shrugs. Not sure how to push the sheer enormity of the _thing_ he’s feeling through the narrow column of his throat.

It’s just him and Doctor Geiszler left, the latter sitting cross-legged on a desk, playing with a laser pointer and a group of drones. And, now, looking at Suresh with his strange, unfathomably alien stare.

“It was one of the first things we lost,” he eventually says. “After the Drifts, yeah. But after the first hundred or so mil, too.”

Which . . . wait. What? Hundred million . . . dollars? Suresh kind of knew, vaguely, that Doctor Geiszler was rich, but—

But the man in question is continuing: “We figured it out on a flight, back to the States. First time we’d been back since the Shao job, y’know? And we’re kinda dreading it, getting groped by TSA and standing in Immigration for a million years and getting grilled by some unlucky sonovabitch not nearly getting paid enough to really give a shit. Y’know how it is. Probably even more than we do.”

Suresh nods because, yes. He does indeed know _exactly_ how it is.

“‘Cept, thing was? We were on Shao’s jet, not flying commercial. So we land in this private airport and there’s no TSA, there’s barely an immigration. Just a lot of dudes calling us ‘Doctor Geiszler, sir’ and apologising for inconveniencing us for, like. Asking for our passport.

“So we’re out and piled into the back of a Phantom in, like. Fifteen minutes, max. And we’re thinking, ‘Huh.’ So we start paying attention. And we realise, like. We’re just kinda not . . . part of the world any more. Anything and everything we could possibly want or need, there are like armies of people waiting to get it for us. We never have to, like. Figure out how to actually _do_ anything; mundane shit, y’know? Like, ‘Oh fuck, ran outta toilet paper.’ Nah; we have _people_ for that. Inconvenience just, like. Doesn’t exist. And every human we’re interacting with, either we own them, in which case we can do whatever the fuck we want, or they own us, in which case the reverse. Everything gets stripped down to that; who owns who. It’s all about power, about control. We aren’t part of the world; we _own_ it. At least part of it. And it gets real easy, when you own part of the world, to just think . . . ‘Well. What if it was just a _little more_?’ And when you own something? You can do whatever the fuck you want with it. It’s practically your _right_. Even when it’s people. Or the entire planet.”

Suresh nods. He isn’t entirely sure what this story has to do with making soap, but it seems important that Doctor Geiszler is telling it to him, so:

“Midas’s Curse,” he says. “Like . . . the dude who turned everything he touched into gold, right? We had a Lit teacher, back home. She told us Midas was a real guy. Or, like. Based on one? And the place he was from, it was one of the first places to start using money. Coins and stuff. So the curse . . . it isn’t really about turning things to literal gold. It was about— about—”

“Reducing everything to a monetary value. Nothing is worth anything but the amount of cash you can get for it in exchange.”

Suresh nods. “Right. That’s why it was a curse. It made Midas miserable.”

“It’s intoxicating, at first,” Doctor Geiszler says. “A game. That’s why it’s dangerous. And by the time it stopped being fun . . .” He shrugs, fingers idly tickling the drones that’ve curled onto his lap, begging for attention. “When we . . . got out, we told ourself we wouldn’t forget that. Wouldn’t do things because they made us rich, or cool, or famous, or powerful. We’d do things for _fun_. Do things because they were fun for other people, too. We don’t want to own the world; we want to live in it, alongside everyone else.” He flicks his eyes up to Suresh, just briefly, usual manic grin for once replaced with something softer. Something quiet and honest and real.

Suresh says: “I get it. Um. I think.”

Because soap is fun. Glitter is fun, and breeding tiny kaiju with big fuzzy antennae and teaching them to play fetch is fun. It’s all fun, and none of it is about getting rich, or amassing power, or destroying the planet. And maybe it’s not saving it, either, not exactly, but . . .

But it’s helping to make something worth saving. Helping people remember why they want to.

“And, you know,” Doctor Geiszler adds, sharpness sliding back into his smirking. “Anything that makes j-tech smell better? Not gonna say no to that.”

“Of all the people in all the Shatterdomes, you are not the one to complain about other people’s stench.” Doctor Gottlieb, emerging from behind a monitor bank. Suresh wonders how long he’s been listening.

“You love our man musk and you cannot deny it.” Doctor Geiszler does not miss a beat, fluttering his eyelashes at his husband like a coy cartoon maiden.

Doctor Gottlieb just rolls his eyes, but he also does stand close enough that Doctor Geiszler can lean against his side. “From the chatter in the hall I assume your class went well?”

“I think so?” Suresh says. Then thrusts out a loaf mold, awkwardly. “Um. Here. I made this for you? As thank you. It’s, um. Lemon verbena and cypress. And some ground walnut shells. For, um. Exfoliation?”

Doctor Gottlieb takes the block and inhales deeply. “Oh. How delightful.” He smiles as he says it; an actual, legit smile that makes him look less like a strict boarding school headmaster and more like someone’s dad, maybe. “And it doesn’t even look like it belongs in a biohazard container. What a novel addition to our home that would be.” Now he _definitely_ looks like a dad; has exactly the same expression, in fact, that Suresh’s own father gets when he’s making terrible puns to tease Mom. Doctor Gottlieb even gets a stuck-out tongue from Doctor Geiszler in retaliation. And it’s cute but, also, they’re both kind of Suresh’s bosses and watching them, like. Make out or something would be a bit _too_ humanizing.

So he grabs the box of his leftover supplies and says: “I better, um. Get back. Curfew and whatever. But thanks again. And see you tomorrow, Doc!”

He gets a wave and a chorus of “good night”, added “dude” optional, and hurries out of the lab. (From the sounds of it, there is _definitely_ kissing going on by the time he gets to the door.)

Ilya is waiting for him in the hallway.

“So come on,” he says, when he sees Suresh emerge. “How’d it go, Soap Master? Master all that soap?” Grinning and teasing, and Suresh bodychecks him into the wall, just a little bit, in response. From its position on Suresh’s shoulder, Zee squeaks in protest from the jostling.

“Come to the next class and find out.”

“It’s booked out! Already! I can’t believe I’m being thrown out of my own Drift partner’s soap school!” He scritches Doctor Zoidberg’s head as he says it.

“Lab rules are lab rules.”

“I’ll write a complaint to the Marshal. She’ll make an exception.”

“She will not.” Honestly, there’s only one person in the Shatterdome Suresh lives in more fear of causing Disappointment in than Doctor Gottlieb, and it’s Marshal Mori. “But if you’re so desperate you can be my soap minion.”

“‘Minion,’ huh? That an official PPDC position?”

“Maybe,” says Suresh, grinning and striding ahead and thinking of things that are fun. “If you’re good enough.”


End file.
